Urban Happiness

Abstract

Social inequility is still part of the current world, not only in the poorer countries but also in the wealthiest once. With the use of gentrification it was tried to hide the poverty by improving the quality of neighbourhoods. Although this improved the liveability and wealthiness of a neighbourhood, it did not improve the lifes of the former citizens as they were forced out. This shows the wrong focus of the regeneration that is often used in deprived neighbourhoods, improving the liveability instead of improving the lives of the citizens. To be able to improve the life of the citizens, it is important to find out what their wishes and needs are, so an urbanist can implement these in the design. Therefore, this thesis researches how an urbanist can establish citizens’ participation as a design method to be able to design life improving neighbourhoods for its citizens. This will be done by answering the main question of: “how can the use of citizens’ participation in the urban design process of the regeneration of deprived neighbourhood improve the liveability?”. To answer this question, research on citizens’ participation, happiness and liveability will be combined with analyses on a case studie to create a new design method for urbanists that is focused on participation as the main way of designing. The manual will show how participation can be used as a design method and how an urbanist should approach this way of designing. The main focus is on the way the urbanist should communicate with the citizens so they will both understand each other.